


The Protector

by Jiaxing



Series: The Chronicles of Annwn [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, ESP, F/M, M/M, Magic-Users, sorcery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 02:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7294999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jiaxing/pseuds/Jiaxing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When The Annwn Empire was destroyed, pieces of her powerful crystal core and some of her descendants were transported to earth. <br/>Present day, Abel Lee and his brother Danzel found themselves entangled in the middle of complex rivalry of supernatural power users. They, too, had to deal with one dark power that defiling humanity by transforming corpses into powerful monsters. Abel stood as the defender of humanity, the protector of the civilians, while Danzel fell in love with a mysterious girl that might not stand on the same side with his brother. Moreover, as their journey went farther, they found out that there might be darker secrets about their past and family, and how it all started from the Annwn Empire royal family affairs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This story initially published on my wattpad https://www.wattpad.com/myworks/73212723-the-protector-the-chronicles-of-annwn-1  
> I didn't know AO3 has original work fandom. But after I do, I decided to post it here too. I hope you can give me feedback ^^ Cheers...

_There was a goddess with ethereal beauty_

_Mother of three, spouse of an immortal god and a wise man_

_The oldest son was the heir of immortality,_

_The younger twins were the heir of the wisdom of humanity_

_The firstborn was cruel and arrogant_

_With his power, he tormented his brothers_

_The second son roared up the sound of plea toward the heaven_

_Begged for mercy, justice and power_

_Came the trickster, offered a craft_

_A craft to make him as powerful as his brother_

_The middle one mastered the craft_

_He challenged his brother to an unending battle_

_The youngest loved peace in nature_

_He, too, lifted up the voice of plea toward the sky_

_Came again the trickster_

_“Your life would bring peace amongst your brothers,” said he_

_The youngest, as naive as he was, believed the calling_

_He threw himself into the battle,_

_Soon his life was expired in the brothers’ hands_

_The goddess cried in despair_

_Thus let out a curse_

_“You shall die protecting my youngest’ descendants,” was her curse to the firstborn_

_“You shall exhaust your life to a never ending thirst to sought more power,” was her curse for the second_

_“...and you, I shall banish you to the earth. For eternity shall you deceive mankind and to be deceived!!” she screamed to the trickster._

**

That night’s sky was bright with the flame of fire that burned down the castle’s complex, one by one. The fire was blazing up to the sky, as if wanted to swallow it into its embrace. The high general Rae Lawran could only gazed dispiritedly as the castle building turned into ashes bit by bit.

_It’s all gone now..._

The young general shook his head, forcing himself to focus. He had a very important task, which waiting for him to deliver, even if it would demand his own life. He tossed away his ragged cloak and took his _defendere_ crystal. The crystal could provide protection from any attack for its user. Rae chanted the simple chant to activate the crystal. Soon after, his body was surrounded by a layer of water-like coating. 

The young man took his steps to the northern part of the castle, where the king and queen’s chamber was. He broke through a flock of fleeing ladies-in-wait and pushed away some eunuchs who were running with a bucket of water, or some valuables, or their body only. Some of his men saw him headed toward the king’s chamber and followed him. As he guessed their intention, Rae immediately waved his hand and commanded them to return to their post.

“But general,” his captain protested, “Northern complex was the first complex that got hit. There would be packed with Balins. At least let some of us go with you! We could assist you and assuring the safety of the queen and the crown prince...”

Rae stopped and pushed that captain back, said firmly, “Stay where you are to help the king at the front gate. Help me to evacuate the ladies-in-wait and the eunuchs, so them fleeing won’t disturb the defence that king had erected. Leave the queen and crown prince to General Lee and me. Do you understand me, Captain Kayene?!”

The captain could only clench his teeth and nodded. He then returned to his original post, along with his men. Rae continued to move forward, casting some water magic to repel the fire that seemed thirsty for his life as he went. A couple of minutes after, the tall and well-build general had reached the corridor which connecting the eastern part of the castle, his original post, with the northern part.

His eyebrows frowned, as he tried to suppress his agony and anger when he saw before his eyes, the most beautiful part of the castle, which he loved so much had now laid in ruins. The originally painted sky-blue columns had now blackened and cracked. All the rare plants and beautiful flowers planted surrounding the corridor had now burned and destroyed. He saw his men’s corpses all over the marble floor, where their blood had spoiled the white colour. Rae also saw some burnt Balins’ corpses. The _offendere_ crystal (the crystal that could produce attacks depending on the kind of magic infused into it) which planted on the columns seemed to be working.

Rae caught a glimpse of movement approaching from the west, made him jump sideway to avoid the attack. He then saw a Balin crushed a column, not far from where he stood before. Rae took a good look at his attacker. That Balin was two meters high, with a pair of muscled arms and body. Its skin was coal-black, while its originally good-figured face now had been pulled backward as its teeth became large fangs and shark-like teeth, completely disfiguring its face. The creature’s skull had cracked open and showing its blackened brain. Its blood-red eyes glued to the young general, hungry for blood.

“That was Lee’s doing, right? You should’ve just let her had her way with you, cut your carcass brain into pieces with her Aoife sword...”

The creature growled, and then put an attack to Rae with its claws. The young general jumped once more, not to flee the attack, but to find chance to counter-attack. He pulled out his sword, and then dripped his own blood on the crystal that implanted on the handle of his sword.

“Neara!!” He called.

Responded to the call, Rae’s sword was glowing. Followed the bright light, a beautiful woman appeared. She was radiant with the golden light surrounding her slender body. The woman had long wavy hair, which she adorned with a gold crown. She was dressed in golden robe, made her beauty glowed to the fullest. The woman locked her sight to the Balin, before she shone once more and entered Rae’s body. The young general felt a flow of strength in his body. He knew then, he had unified with his sword’s soul.

Rae dropped fierce attacks to the Balin. His sword swung mercilessly, craving for its opponent’s blood. The creature was trying to defend itself with its claws, before it howled in pain when Rae’s sword cut its whole arm. It did not took too long for the young general to eventually cut off the creature’s head, and put it dead once more.

After killed that creature, Rae continued to move on to the Northern complex, only to stop occasionally to kill any Balin that blocked his way. When he reached the throne room, he saw his best friend and partner, Arlette Lee. The younger woman was facing two Noble Balins. This kind of Balin was different with the ones that Rae just killed. Noble Balin had similar appearance to normal human, and was equipped with high artificial intelligent. Sometimes, it was difficult to tell them apart with real normal living human.

Rae grew up with Arlette. Rae’s family line had always been serving in imperial army. The man himself was the twentieth generation of High General of The Annwn Empire. Arlette’s family, on the other hand, was one of the queen’s closest relatives. The girl initially nurtured to be a sophisticated and elegant noblewoman, to be married off to a prince or other nobility. However, she never liked it. She had always loved the thrill of a soldier’s life, thus forced Rae to teach her all skills that any good soldier should have mastered. She, then, asked her parents to send her off to the Imperial Army Academy, together with Rae. The two best friends graduated in the same time, and smoothly made career as soldiers, then became two of the court’s best generals.

One of the Noble Balins cursed at Arlette when the female general drilled a hole on its stomach. Rae took a glimpse of victorious smile was drawn on Arlette’s ever inviting full lips, hidden behind the curtain of her red hair that fell onto her beautiful face. The smile soon after changed into a victorious laugh as the woman eventually took the Balin’s life for eternity.

“Having fun by yourself, Lee?” Rae jumped to join the woman in the fight.

It was then, when he took a closer look, that he realized how blood had spoiled his best friend’s silver armour, both black and red bloods. Arlette’s marble cheek had also scarred with deep cuts that still dripping blood. The red flow of life was also dripping from one side of Arlettes lips. The sight made Rae even more furious. He prepared to kill the Balins into tiny bits that his sword could make.

“I could hold them off, Rae,” Arlette whispered while swinging her sword toward the enemies. “Go find Queen Maeve and the crown prince. They should be in the crystal room...”

Rae was hesitate, worried for his friend’s safety. He could see that the woman was struggling, even to standing firm. Wounds had scarred every possible spot on her slender yet muscular body. However, he knew that she was right. The safety of the Queen and Crown Prince were of most importance. He killed one more Balin in one struck, then reached for Arlette’s shoulder to kiss her on cheek.

“’Till we meet again, my friend...,” he whispered.

“Live on, my friend,” replied Arlette. A faint smile cracked on her pale face.

Rae let go the woman’s shoulders and ran to the crystal room, where they put the core crystal that was use to produce other crystals across the empire. Rae pushed the polar room’s door. The door minted from mixtures of gold, bronze, and crystals from the core itself. His eyes were blind for seconds, due to the radiating and brilliant light of the core. Rae needed another minutes before he could get used to the light and started to cast his eyes around the room.

Crystal room hosted three meters in height and 1, 75 m in width of a giant crystal. The crystal always radiated a brilliant white light, thus the name Gwendolyn given to her by the king. Gwendolyn was the polar that withhold the entire empire due to her tremendous power, made her the most desirable treasure to be claimed by others, especially by the creator of Balins.    

When the phenomena started to occur a decade ago, no one knew who created the Balins. At first, the court administrators thought they were victims of an infectious break out that transformed human into zombie. However, after several autopsies and researches, the imperial alchemists and physicists eventually drew a shocking conclusion. There was no deadly virus, only some sort of craft, powerful one on top of that, which was casted toward corpses. The craft was a black magic and required powerful employment of alchemy, not for any ordinary man doing. The culprit infused the craft into a synthetic crystal and planted it into a corpse’s chest, where its heart used to be. The king sent Intels to sought clues, but to no avail. Even worse, not only they grew in numbers, there were new kind of Balin was being created. The new kind was more sophisticated, named the Noble Balin.

_Then, those damned creature finally strike a blow to the King and his family. A treason as it was..._

Rae used his _defendere_ crystal to create protection for his sight, in order to reduce Gwendolyn’s brilliant light that started to hurt his pair of black eyes.

“Your Majesty!” He called, eyes wandered to the surroundings, sought glimpse of his mistress’ trace.

Rae felt as if his heart stops beating when he saw a sight of a woman in green silk dress was laying on one of the corners. He ran circling the copper floor built surrounding the core crystal Gwendolyn. The sounds of his boots stomping on the floor echoed all over the room, as he dashed away to check the body.      

Queen Maeve was the most beautiful woman Rae ever met in his life. The sophisticated queen had a beautiful long and silky black hair, which she used to style elegantly into beehive, yet now covered her body like a piece of black garment. The queen’s face had always luminous, radiating others with joy. However, now the beautiful face had turned stiff like cold-white gypsum. Her green jade-like eyes, which always full of wisdom and compassion, had now forever hidden beneath her shut eyelids.

“Your majesty!!” Rae cried. He shook his mistress’ body, as if by doing so he could call her soul back.

“Your highness...,” whispered another voice, which so familiar to Rae like the sound of his own heartbeat.

Arlette was wobbly approaching his side, then, knelt next to her best friend. She reached for her aunt’s, the queen, cheek with her bloody hand and stroke it gently. Rae could see Arlette’s body was shivering, as the frigid air of death had taken over all the warmth that the queen had always emitted in her lifetime.

Arlette bit her lips, restrained herself to let out a cry. She then stood up, cast her eyes wildly, looking for something.

“Arlette...”

“Rae..., where is the crown prince?”

The words stunned Rae. He hastily let go the queen’s body and followed his best friend to seek any sign of the crown prince presence in that room.

“Rae,” called Arlette. She now stood at the other corner of the room.

The young general turned his head, and felt his heart thumped heavily. He saw Arlette was standing in front of the control machine panel. The machine was use to control and operate any technology that used by their nation, as well as by other small nations and countries that were surrounding their empire like satellites.

“Rae...,” called Arlette once more, this time more as a whisper.

Rae walked across the room, to where Arlette was. He followed her sight and saw that two of the monitors had activated. The machine informed that any last command inputted had completed. Rae felt his stomach twisted into knots when he realized that the active monitors were the monitors to open portals between universe, and the other was to activate self-destruction program for Gwendolyn. The self-destruction would not only set to blow the crystal into pieces, but also would put an eternal end for their empire.

Rae’s eyes were fixated to the numbers shown on the monitor. He was bewildered, not knowing what to do to stop the running program. The machine had started the count down, and showed the destination of the portal.

It was written, “Earth...”

**


	2. Abel Lee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meet Abel Lee, an ESPER, EOPID agent, a department exclusively handling and investigating any supernatural phenomena. Abel and his partner Alexa, are sent to investigate a supernatural case there. Little that they know, this particular case would lead them deeper into supernatural power-users rivalry that exist for centuries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please do not confuse since I'm using first person POV, but I changed it between the brothers as the chapter changed. I will always write down the name of the brother who takes role as the chapter narrator at the beginning of each chapter.

The goddess stared at me with her gypsum eyes. Like the other parts of her body, the corners of her eyes adorned with spider’s webs. The first time I saw her, I thought she was only an ordinary Hellenic-styled statue. However, when I paid more attention, I noticed that she was the goddess in the story I used to hear when I was little.

“I never thought the story was real,” I whispered, still admiring the beautiful face of the goddess that clouded by anger and to her long index finger she pointed toward something, or someone.

Alexa turned her head, frowned. “What was?”

I pointed toward the goddess. “Her...”

Alexa’s pair of blue-sky eyes shed confusion, whilst she frowned even more.

“The story about this goddess,” I explained. “She had three children from two husbands. The eldest was born from an immortal husband, and the younger twins from a mortal man.”

“And you recognized the goddess from...?”

Seeing that Alexa seemed interested to hear the full-story, I dragged her closer to the statue. I pointed to the goddess’ hand.

“This pose was taken from the scene when the goddess put curse to her first and second son who killed their youngest brother accidentally. On that same moment, she was also cast curse to the trickster deity who gave witchcraft to her second son and tricked the youngest to sacrifice himself in order to stop his brothers from fighting. At the end, the youngest son was killed. I’ve heard about the story when I was a kid.”

Alexa gave me a stern look. Her blue eyes locked on me, but with different intention as it were before. She brushed off a strand of her chin-long and straight red hair from her temple, and then put her hand on my shoulder. The bony yet strong hand of hers pushed me to bend my knee, so I levelled my height with her petite body. Her thin red lips formed a bow, which both ends nearly touched her split and sharp chin.

I could only grin.

“Listen, Abel Lee...,” she said. “The story, as good as it is, is a myth. Myth is equivalent with none-that-it-matter with our business here! If you do have some leisure to sightseeing and observing statues at this so-called museum, it would be better if you turn on your ‘radar vision’ and start to scan this place. Then, _please_..., please find that culprit Balin, so we can return to HQ as soon as possible...”

“You said you wanted to know,” I protested, but gave consent to her plea.

I turned on my so-called ‘radar vision’. I saw my own reflection on a silver shield of a medieval warrior statue, and witnessed how my iris colour changed from black to silver with specks of green.

 _Please do not get shocked with this slight change_. This was how my power works. To be honest, Alexa and I were not ordinary humans. We called ourselves Esper. We have supernatural or ESP power, to be exact. Alexa, for example, is an Animorpher. She could transform into any kind of animal shape, like _any kind_. In one transformation, she could morph her parts of body into different kind of animals’ anatomy. There was this one time when she morphed into a buffalo with a rhino body, yet had claws of a lion and bear. Oh, did I mention about the gator’s tail to complete her transformation?

I had had always thought that she was a genius.

I, myself, had this ‘radar vision’. Its function was more or less similar with the combination of infrared and thermal vision. The differences, however, I did not use it to have visual in darkness, but to see the ‘other’ sphere of this world. Well, maybe similar with spiritual world, but it wasn’t packed with ghosts or spirits. Ordinary men might not realize that they shared their existence with creatures called ‘Balin’, a zombie-like creature. There were ordinary people that did not bore with natural super-power such as us, but were able to mastered alchemy and witch crafts. They were sorcerers. Such kind of people was who we deemed responsible for the creation of these so-called Balins.

History had had always tracked record of some humans who tried to play god. After millennia of failure invented technologies to create human or to clone one, some maniacs turned their attention to the alchemy and witchcraft. Eventually, a decade ago, one of them managed to create this Balin.

I had never witnessed the creation of Balin (which I preferred to call ‘it’ as it), but from the textbooks I read, I knew that a sorcerer would create a Balin by preserving a dead body which heart they replaced with crystal. This crystal was the crucial element. It wasn’t your ordinary crystal, but a crystallized stone by using their power and knowledge of alchemy. Each crystal crystallized using different method, thus made each Balin unique. These Balins also possessed artificial intelligent, came from combination of their old memory of their past lifetime, with additional intelligent infused by their ‘creator’.  Apparently, the crystal planted inside these Balins’ body was not merely useful to make them came to life, but also to relive their brain cells.

Each sorcerer seemed eager to create the strongest and the most ‘humanized’ Balin. The stronger a sorcerer could be, the stronger super-power their Balin would be possesses, and their Balin might be hard to be told-apart with living human.

However, there was no single Balin managed to fool my radar-vision. This vision could detect the golden aura used to glow around a sorcerer, and of which also radiated from the Balin’s crystal. With that, I could tell-apart which is what. If their creator was strong enough, usually that aura would be weaker and clouded by yellowish (or bluish) aura that normally emitted by ordinary human. Nevertheless, none could fool my vision. Even if it were only a tiny speck of gold, I would detect it out.

Before I continued, I thought it would be best to first explain about my and Alexa’s line of work. We were partners in a task force called EOPID (abbreviation for Extra-Ordinary Phenomena Investigation Department). This secret task force was established by Alpha Law, the world number one conglomerate and businessman. He and his family were also like us, Espers, but they would only reveal the fact to the EOPID members. The world only acknowledged Alpha Law as a successful businessman that had wide-range of business network starting from home utilities, to technologies and weaponry.

Alpha Law decided to establish this EOPID when a decade ago, a Balin found dead next to his best friend’s daughter. When the M.E. cut him open, he found himself looking at one already long-dead human remains with a piece of rock stuffed in his chest. After conducted series of investigation, Alpha Law finally discovered fact about these Balins. He discovered numbers of unexplained phenomena, which victimized many of civilians, were in-fact the doing of the Balins. The Law family had always supervised Esper community, such as gave shelter to the abandoned Esper children, or helped them schooled their power. Therefore, Alpha Law decided to train some of these Espers as agents to hunt, capture, and/or kill any Balin. EOPID also had authority to track down any sorcerers that creating chaos or terror to civilians, and to destroy their power in order to protect civilians.

So far, EOPID had ten field agents and four technicians. The field agents, like Alexa and I, had to always ready to go to any part of the world from our HQ, which located at the basement of Law Inc. building in Jakarta. Such as today, four hours ago I was still leisurely sitting on my chair at HQ, sipping my coffee, before five minutes after, my beloved boss, Brilliant Law (who was also happened to be the only daughter of Alpha Law), warped me and Alexa to an old castle served as museum for locals, somewhere in remote area of Scotland.

Report said that there were two mysterious deaths in three months. According to Brenna, one of the EOPID technicians whose duty was to search such cases, the first body was a young man. Said young man was a John Doe; he was found dead attached to one part of the castle walls, only from top part of his head to his waist. The rest of his body had transformed into creeping plant that crept the whole wall. The case soon became phenomenon and attracted many of scientific authorities as well as tourists, in and out the Great Britain. Due to the fame of the body, which raised the locals’ income from tourism, no one cared enough to give the said man a proper burial.

The second body was found a month ago. This time, all villagers recognized her as the village chief’s daughter. The upper part of the said young woman was found bound by vines to the water fountain at the village square. The death had broken the chief’s heart. He, then, realized that this was not exactly a healthy tourism attraction. He immediately took down his daughter’s body and contacted law authorities to investigate the two cases.

Scotland Yard sent down their investigators to investigate said cases for three weeks, before they were reluctantly gave up and decided that the phenomena were beyond their capabilities. Furthermore, England’s top M.E. in London could not determine the cause of death of the two bodies. Miss B, aka Brilliant Law, agreed with Brenna that the two deaths must had been caused by Balin. She, thus, dispatched Alexa and me to this dreaded place ASAP. We were dispatched using a warp machine created by Miss B herself. The said machine could transport object(s) throughout space and dimension, thus, we could arrived here in matter of seconds, around three to four hours ago. We under covered as tourists, and took stroll around the village to gather information and ‘scanning’. The information finally led us this castle, where the first body found. We were suspecting that the Balin might have been one of the museum workers. Still disguising as tourists, we then took a tour around the castle.

According to the pamphlet on my hand, this castle used to be the residence of an eccentric Scottish nobleman. He loved antiques and old artefacts, to the extent that he devoted his life and almost all of his fortunes to collect said stuffs. At the end, the nobleman died a poor man, with no living relatives, thus his castle and collections were to be given away to public display as museum. The museum (originally) was expected to raise the village income. However, I was quite pessimistic about that. The museum hardly had any visitor. Beside us, there were only three to five other tourists. The artefacts displayed here also in poor condition, and (as far I could say) had no significant historical values. 

We didn’t find anything inside the museum. Moreover, my sensitive nose was allergic to dust; therefore, I dragged Alexa to stroll around the outer parts of the complex. There was a small forestry next to the castle, which often used for camping site. At the back of the complex, there was a cluster of stone houses. I guessed these houses used to serve as the housing for servants. In front of these houses, some statues recklessly put in rows. One of them was that goddess’ statue. Judging from their appearances, they initially were the ex-occupants of the museum.

“That room is the curators’ office,” one soft voice stopped our steps, “Visitors are not allowed to enter.”

We turned our head and I shut off my radar vision to have a good look of the other speaker. This was one of my vision’s weaknesses. When I turned it on, I would not be able to see my surroundings normally, everything just turned into clusters of colours, like when one was using thermal vision. I noticed that the other speaker was a skinny boy with thick-frame spectacles. He seemed in the same age with Alexa, around 17 to 18 years old. His pale face full with speckles, and he had light brown hair that brought out his light-green eyes colour. After I satisfied observing him, I turned on my vision once more, and found out something that made me grinned in glee.

“Your eyes...,” the boy stuttered when he saw the change on my eyes colour.

Alexa sighed, “See, Abel, that’s why I keep telling you to wear your shades, so no one would notice the change...”

“Oh please, who would in their right mind wear sunglasses in such foggy weather?! Moreover, its best he saw my silver eyes,” I smirked to the boy, “’cause this pair of eyes shall be his last memory before death embrace him for the second time.”

Alexa fixated her gaze to the boy now, and she smirked too.

“Well..., well..., how lucky are we, to be able to catch a big fish without any bait...?”

The boy’s body stiffened, before he suddenly ran into the forest near the castle.

“After him!!” I let out a command that promptly executed by Alexa, even before I shut my mouth.

Alexa took off her clothes and revealed her special suit, which she always wore beneath her ‘normal’ clothes. Alexa’s slender body vibrated for seconds, before her white legs turned into yellow colours full with black dots, followed with transformations on her torso, hands, and finally her red head. In matter or seconds, my cute yet sassy partner had completed her transformation as a cheetah, and she immediately dashed in front of me. I forced myself to chase the four legs of cheetah’s, which could outrun a car. I also stopped a couple of time to pick up Alexa’s strayed clothing, to make sure she would still have something to wear when she changed back. Well, actually Miss B had made a sort of body suit for Alexa to wear, so she would not have to be completely naked when she transformed back. With her techno craft power (which was a power to create or modified technologies), Miss B had made sure that Alexa’s black suit could adjust any transformation she would make, and also to duplicate the colour of the animals she would morphed into.

After a few minutes, I had lost track of them. I stopped in front of a big tree, catching my breath, whilst casting my eyes to surroundings, in case my partner left me some signs. After some minutes had passed, I finally saw disturbed grasses and faint track of a cheetah’s foot, not far from where I stood. I was about to follow the trail when suddenly, I lost control of my feet. Before I realized what had happened, I had been hang and bound on the trunk of the tree where I was resting seconds ago.

I tried to comprehend what was happening, when I realized that I was bound by creeping plants.

“Who...are...you?”A voice hissed from the top of the tree.

I fixed my gaze and saw that the voice was coming from the museum-boy’s mouth (or whom I should call as Balin). I had no idea that he had been watching me all this time.

“Animal indeed has animal-sized brain,” I cursed Alexa, “How could she doesn’t even realize that she had lost her prey!”

“Whom did you cursed?!!” 

I craned my head so high to see below.

“Alexa~~!!” I couldn’t be happier to see that girl. I pointed the Balin and gave her a grin, “I was cursing it...”

Alexa stared at me with stern look. She had transformed her head back to her original human head, but still maintaining her rhino-skin, paws of tigers, and four legs of horse’s transformation.

“You’re pretty...,” I grinned, and she sneered.

“WHO THE HELL ARE YOU????!!!”

Uh-oh, apparently the Balin’s patience had reached its limit.

The creature had decided not to wait for our answers, and started to use its power to animate a tree. A giant tree next to us started waved around its huge branches to attack Alexa. Alexa jumped side-ways with her horse’s legs and held back the branches attack with her claws. The branches broke into pieces.

“Hey, be more careful, don’t hurt the tree!!” I panicked. “Global warming!!”

“Shut up!! It will be faster if _you_ help to kill it, you know?!” Alexa yelled back before morphed her head to one of a bull. Apparently, she was trying to horn down the tree to the ground.

The Balin jumped and crawled on top of me. I noticed that the boy’s green eyes had changed colour to bloody red. His originally white cheeks had drawn back, almost touching his now-pointed ears, to give place for huge fangs and shark-like teeth. The skinny body of the boy had now turned blackish and packed with stiff muscles.

“S-stay away…!” I tilted or cocked my head to maintain distance from its filthy face, whenever it tried to approach me. I had been an EOPID agent for four years and fought many kinds of Balin on the process. However, still, to see a Balin’s face up-close would never be my favourite choice.

“A-alexaaa…!” 

Alexa did not ignore me. She was still busy with her tree. The Balin also disregarded my plea, simply kept approaching me. I felt the veins in my hips and feet were thumping as if they were eager to find its new form, and to dissolve into the tree where I hung. Now I could tell for sure that this creature given the power to use or animate plants, including changing a human into one.

“You think you’re great, aren’t you?” I hissed. I was furious! “Do you think you are that invisible with this power, huh~?!”

I was focusing all of my power toward each cell and vein inside my body. The Balin was first still smiling viciously to me, but now it wore confusion on its face. I was the only one who was laughing now. I felt each cell and organ inside my body stiffened, followed by my skin that became as hard as metals, and it started glowing. In matter of seconds, my body had been covered by metals layer, outside as well as the inside part. I ripped the darn plants that bind me just before, and stretched my hand as fast as I could to throw a bone-breaking punch to the Balin.

The creature was not ready. It was still shocked witnessing my transformation. My fist made a loud bang when it hit the Balin in the stomach, and sent him flying. Another loud ‘bam’ echoed on the forest when the creature crashed into a tree. I was ready to blow another punch when I noticed, from the corner of my eyes, a glimpse of a chimera’s shadow had bolted to attack the Balin. It sunken its teeth on the Balin’s neck, and tore the head apart from the rest of the Balin’s body.

“They are always taste bitter,” Alexa morphed back to her petite body. She spat with a disgusted face.

“I’ll ask Miss B to include that on the textbook of Balin 101, since it was only you who ever tasted it. Don’t you feel sick? It was a corpse, nonetheless. A fucking human corpse...”

Alexa threw me a pointed look. “I don’t have to bite him if you kill him faster, Ironman!”

“I was about to kill him with another blow if only you didn’t interfere!”

“Why didn’t you use your power earlier?”

I glanced to any part of my body that I could see. I was still a giant metal creature from top to toe. I shrugged.

“Lazy...”

Alexa’s red eye-bows shot up to her hairlines. She said nothing, and started to collect her clothes. She put them on quickly, and then started to swing her legs to the museum’s direction. I immediately panicked and tried to stop her.

“Lex..., Lex..., please don’t walk out just yet. You know that I need ten more minutes before my power wear off and I could change back. Please wait, OK...?”

And..., _there you go_. Beside the ‘radar vision’, I still had this ability to control and/or manipulate five elements in Daoism, which were fire, water, wood, metal and earth. The Daos believed that this universe and everything in it established based on these five core-elements. The five could strengthen each other, or weakened one another. In every single beat of life, the five elements had to be balance. The lacked of or the profuse of one element in comparison with the others would creating imbalance that could lead to disharmony of the nature. Human’s body, in principality, also established on the harmonic coordination of these five elements. Once any imbalance of element occurred in one’s body, then illness would soon materialized. My power allowed me to use the five elements to counter the enemy’s dominant element. My ‘vision’ could help me read my enemy’s element, which usually shown by their aura, then used its polar element to counter it. For example, if my enemy had fire element, I would use water element to neutralize it.

Sadly, different with Alexa’s, I could only use this power once a day, an element a day, and for only a mere 15 minutes time limit. If I forced myself to use more than one element, and/or more than 15 minutes, then (someone said) my internal organs would explode and I would die due to internal bleedings. Well, at least that what was said to me by a woman who raised me. I never tried it myself. It was always better to be safe than sorry, right?

Alexa stuck out her tongue, pushed me away, as she walked approaching the Balin’s corpse. As it returned dead, the Balin changed into its human form. The skinny body of the boy laid stiff not far from us, whilst his severed head had also change to its original form, next to my feet. I squatted down and gazed upon the empty green eyes. He was so young, and looked so naïve. I bet he would have never imagined that someone would raise him back from death and turned him into a monster.

“Lex, lent me your connector,” said me without turning my head, since my petite partner was busy using her wolf claw to rip open the Balin’s chest and dug out its crystal heart. I tried my best to censor that memory.

Alexa threw her connector with a splash of the Balin’s blackish blood. I was so grateful to have strong stomach.

“Bren,” I called, when a face showed up on the screen.

Brenna was a beautiful woman of Spanish and Javanese mix-blood descends. Her skin was tan, like the seductive colour of sweet chocolate milk. Her skin colour was a great combination for her copper-coloured eyes. As always, she braided her wavy raven hair to the back, showing off her smooth heart-shaped face. She still had a pair of dimples on both cheek, which clearly visible whenever she smiled. At that moment, her plump red lips were forming a sweet smile that lit up her exotic face. 

“Abel,” she returned the greetings, “I thought you would never contact me and updating your situation. Miss B is displeased, you know?”

The name promptly made me casting my eyes to Brenna’s surroundings, looking for a glimpse of that scary boss of ours. However, I could only catch a sight of the free-duty field agents were leisurely sitting and chatting around the vicinity. There was no sign of the boss anywhere.

Brenna giggled. “Just kidding. She went to attend a conference since you two were dispatched, and not yet return.”

I felt relieved and sighed. I gave the woman a piercing glance for her prank, and she giggled once more.

“Bren, could you please find this kid’s identity?” I pulled the Balin’s head and shoved it in front of the screen, made Brenna shrieking in disgust.

“Abel, take that head away!”

“Are you done scanning?” Revenge indeed was sweet. Brenna’s cheeks flushed, clearly irritated by my prank. I could only grin and put up innocent face.

“Done, I’ve found his identification. I’ll send it to you.”

Brenna was a brain, a kind of Esper who was born with high intelligentsia and able to manipulate any kind of technology. In Brenna’s case, she could type programs and input commands to the computer merely with her thoughts. As I predicted, she could find information that I needed effortlessly. Alexa’s connector let out a sound of ‘ping’ twice; gave cue of incoming messages. Brenna herself had severed the connection.

“Jonathan Cowell, born January 2nd, 1992, died July 25th, 2012. He died four years ago. He was from Edinburgh, and took History at Edinburgh Uni. Hmm…, cause of death…, oh, traffic accident.”

“No sign of fatality on his body,” Alexa interrupted. She cleansed her hands (heaven knows what she used to do that), and peeked through my shoulder.

“What did you say?”

”No sign of accident on his body.”

I let out a long sigh. In my book, that could only have one meaning.

“What?” She asked.

“Her master healed him first Lex, _then_ changed him into Balin.”

“So?”

“Have you ever seen any Balin that died from accident, yet possessed a flawless corpse as if the accident never took place?”

“This is the first one, I guess.”

“Right, why do you think it could be that way?”

“His master is a perfectionist?”

I resisted the urge to slap this petite girl on the head. I sincerely interested to conduct research on how far the type of certain super power could influence the index number of its user’s intelligentsia.

“Have you read the manual about alchemy, which was a compulsory reading at the beginning of our training?”

Alexa nodded.

“So, you should’ve realized that to return a deformed corpse to its pristine condition would require significant amount of magic energy and complex alchemy formula. Therefore, in our case, the Balin’s master had spent significant power and time to heal him. In my opinion, the most perfectionist wizard or sorcerer would refrain themselves from doing so. They would rather discard the disfigured body and find another, less flawed corpse.”

Alexa cocked her head, boosting her brain cells to comprehend my information. Seconds later, she bugged her eyes as she came to understanding.

“The master had close relationship with the Balin!”

 _Finally...._ “My hunch on this matter also getting stronger because the Balin did possessed significant digits of supernatural power. Have you retrieved the crystal?”

Alexa nodded. She stretched her arms to pass the stone to me. The crystal was diamond-shape and reddish in colour. Alexa cleaned it up, but stains of Balin’s blackish blood were quite persistent. I used my index finger and thumb to get a grip on the cleanest part of the stone, then scanned it with my vision carefully. Precisely as I thought, the stone glowed out sparks of green aura, the sign of wood element that once infused in it.

“The power index was quite high; no wonder it had almost 8,000 MP. Call Brenna again Lex, ask her to send us any data that she could find about this Jonathan. If his master was someone close to him, then the master should’ve been his own family member or one of his closest acquaintances.”

Alexa sighed, but she was executing my command. “So, does it mean we’ll be staying long hours in Scotland until we could track down the master?”

I grinned, before pain came to strike my body like wave. I felt my skin returned to its original state, followed by my internal organs. I had used my power for seventeen-bloody-years, yet never even once I could get used to the agony that it was often inflicted.

“Ooh..., good gracious...,” I moaned.

“Are you alright, Abel?” Brenna asked. She wore a worried expression when she saw my agony through the connector.

“Don’t mind him, he’s always like that when he returned to his normal state. From weird to weirder,” my partner smirked viciously.

I gave her a pointed look while holding the urge to slap this sharp-tongued girl on the head.

“The only living relative of Jonathan Cowell was his mother, and she lives in Edinburgh,” Alexa informed me, eyes glued to her connector.

“We’ll visit her later, if we must. Firstly, let’s find the head of this museum. He may know a thing or two about Jonathan. Open box password 5531, user name Lee, Abel.”

I pointed my gadget, shaped like a wristband with stripe of silver plate on the middle, toward the Balin. “Upload and save,” I inputted the command. My gadget was glowing, and seconds later, the Balin’s corpse had transformed into digital mosaic. Afterward, the mosaic sucked into the silver plate on my gadget.

This gadget was the original creation of Miss B and one of the basic equipments that was compulsory for the on-duty EOPID field agents. Miss B called the gadget by Pandora Box 00-I. The box main function was to save any evidence we collected on the field. It could digitalize any material into algorithm, then saved it into digital data to be downloaded and re-constructed later. We also used this device to store the Balin corpses temporarily, in order to bring them back to the HQ, so the Law’s lab-technicians could conduct research on them.

“Do you think the head of the museum would know something?” Alexa tried to keep up with my walking pace. Apparently, without her cheetah legs, it was hard for her to keep up with my long legs.

“Well, the man was the one who employed Jonathan. So, I guess he could give us some information about the boy. It’s worth a shot, right?”

“Or..., he may be his master!”

That was certainly something I would not be thrilled to expect. At least, not today. If that man was Jonathan’s master, then we definitely would be involved in another battle, whilst I was still powerless until the end of this day. After witnessed the masterpiece of Jonathan’s master, I knew he must be a powerful sorcerer. Without my power to back her up, Alexa would have no chance against him.

“Hopefully not,” I mumbled, as far as possible from the reach of Alexa’s ears.

We walked toward the entrance. The sun almost set, thus the visitors had left the museum one after another. When we finally got there, the nice old cashier lady had left her booth and started to close one part of the museum door.

“Ma’am, please wait!” I called to her attention. She looked at us, waiting.

“Ma’am, do you know where we could find the head of the museum?”

“His office is at the back, just next to the curator’s office,” she answered quickly, then resumed closing the door.

Alexa literally dragged me to the pointed direction. I stared at my partner’s red hairs that were dancing in the air, in resonance with her running pace. I wondered what made this petite girl so excited with the matter on hand. Was she that hungry for battle and adventures?

We arrived at the cluster of stone houses where we met Jonathan earlier. At front of us, there were two maroon doors. Since Jonathan had warned us before, we knew which one is the curator’s office, thus knocked the other door. I turned on my radar vision, and prepared myself to scan the head of the museum. I had decided, if that man was a sorcerer, I would dragged Alexa away from this place, and caught the said man tomorrow.

After three knocks, the door was open with a creaking sound. An old man was answering the door. I let out a relieved sigh when my vision had not shown any indication that the old man was any other than a good ‘ordinary’ senior citizen. I turned off my vision and acknowledged that the museum head had a sharp figure, bald headed, and a tall nose that reminded me of a bird’s beak. His tall built started to bent forward, and he gazed to us bewildered.

“He’s clean,” I whispered to Alexa.

“Excuse me Sir, we would like to ask you about one of your employees named...”

“Who face’s like this,” I cut Alexa’s words and waved my connector’s monitor in front of his eyes. Jonathan’s picture was on it.

The old man looked closely to the picture, so close until his nose almost touch the digital screen.

“Oh, you mean Nathan Rourke! I have not seen him again after the lunch break, so he may had going home. Well, he isn’t really employee here, actually. He loves antiques and offers a helping hand around the museum. In returns, I give him daily pay cheque and allow him to read any book or parchment on the museum collection. He is a diligent and a good kid, so eager to learn. I hope I could make him a real employee here, by next year. Are the two of you friends of his? He rarely mentions about his friends, nor had one visiting him here.”

“Well, you could say that. We, uhm..., his friends back in uni. We came from Edinburgh for holidays, and heard that Nathan is working here, so we came to pay him a visit. We also would like to ask him to be our guide and shows us around.” I ended my bluffed with one enchanting sweet smile that normally very effective to persuade any senior citizen.

The smile indeed was effective, because the old man’s face beamed, and he practically sung out the information we need.

“Actually Nathan just came here a couple of years ago, with his older brother Liam. However, the brothers love camping and hiking, so I think he would be an excellent tour guide for the two of you, especially if you plan to hike.”

“Brother?” I threw bemused look toward Alexa, whom re-checked her connector and shook her head. “Do you know where they live? We may visit their house as well...”

Half an hour after, we arrived at the said ‘Rourke brother’s resident’. It located around two hundreds meter from the village square, where they found the chief’s daughter a month ago. The house was big; two storeys, with white door and windows frame, as well as its roof. The windows glass were pitch black, gave out a stricken contrast with the frames colour and its khaki coloured brick walls. The house, like other houses on its surroundings, had no fence. The only sign for the address was a white mailbox erected near the entrance gravel road.

“Is this the house?” My partner checked her notes again. She tiptoed and tried to peek inside.

“This is it,” I nodded. “We’ll visit them first thing tomorrow.”

Alexa’s red head turned to me, as she glared bemusedly.

“Why would we want to wait until tomorrow?!”

“Lex, my gut is telling me that this ‘brother’ of Jonathan in fact was his master.”

“Therefore, let’s catch him now!”

“Lex, I have no more power left for today. We’d seen Jonathan’s power earlier. Do you think you could handle his master all by yourself?”

Alexa came in realization and loosen up a bit.

“So we rent a room and wait until tomorrow?”

I nodded. “Unless, you have another suggestion. No? OK. Let’s stay here for a night and ask for Miss B’s advice for this case. Hopefully she could send down other agents to help us.”

“This is the first time you are willing to have other agents to help you beside me.”

I did not respond Alexa’s jeer. Honestly, I had bad feelings for this case, but I preferred to keep it to myself. My only hope was I could bring the two of us back home safe and sound. If I had to shave off some of my pride in order to done so, hell..., so be it.

Since the village was open for tourism, many of the villagers house transformed into B&B and hostels. We did not have any difficulty to find a B&B near the Rourkes’ house. In fact, we found one exactly at the opposite side of the Rourkes’, and our room window gave us perfect view of the said house. While waiting for Alexa took her shower, I opened my connector and updated our situation to Brenna. Miss B had not yet return, but Brenna assured us that we would get our back up whenever we needed it. I also sent her the Balin’s data from my Pandora Box. I hope I could get further information from the lab, which presumably might help us to find efficient method to fight the master.

“I also gonna need whatever information that you can dig on Liam Rourke, Bren’,” said me, before I severed the connection.

Alexa finished her shower and had now changed her tops with an over-sized T-shirt that we bought at the souvenir shop next door. Drops of water from Alexa’s hair had wet the T-shirt on her shoulder and part of her chests, faintly revealing the colour of her body suit. I was sure if she was Brenna, in that same condition, I already had a growing problem in my hands. I definitely would be having difficult time to contain myself from the waking urge and the crazy beating of my own heart. However, I felt none of that feelings seeing Alexa at her current state. I really took pity on her lack of womanly attractiveness.

Alexa saw the blinking lights on my connector and started to grumble.

“You contacted the HQ without me.”

I threw my connector to bed and gave her a stern look. “Yep, I’ve reported it all to Brenna, while you were consuming the fresh waters for...almost 45 minutes. Now, it’s my time to have my shower. Please mind the connector, because Brenna will send important information, ‘Kay?”

I did not wait for her reply and grabbed a clean towel. I dashed into the bathroom and locked myself in it. I let out a complimenting whistle when I saw the bathroom was old-fashioned but clean, with wooden glass frame and simple wash bin that stood on a wooden structure. The bathtub was small, with shower on it. I dozed myself in the heat of the water, and let my muscles relaxed.

I was about to sing my favourite song when I felt my surroundings shaken. At first, I thought I was imagining it, but turned off the water, nevertheless. I wiped dry my face and body, while waiting for the next quake, if the previous one was not merely my imagination. I didn’t have to wait long for the second one.

“Abel!!” my petite partner yelled from the room, with background sound of people yelping from our floor and downstairs.

“Earth quake!!”

I put on my shirt and trousers, and then barged out to find Alexa. The girl stood next to our room window, with her gaze locked outside.

“What happened? Was it really an earth quake?”

Before Alexa could answer my question, someone was pounding our door. It was the inn-owner, hastily asked us to go out.

“Alright, we’re coming out!!” I yelled back, although my body was approaching Alexa instead of the door.

My steps stopped by a strong quake that crumbled our room wall, snapped its wooden frame, exactly where Alexa was standing.

“Lex!” I dashed toward her, trying to grab her hand.

Alexa, however, did not fell down. She was floating in the air, instead. She morphed her hands to a pair of bird wings, and flew back to my side.

“Abel, try to scan that area. I don’t think this is your average quake.”

I abode and cast my radar vision to the pointed direction. My partner’s hunch was proven right, since I saw flashes of golden, surrounded by green aura forming giant tree roots, which approaching the village in high-speed.

“The master had sniffed out our presence and act first! He’s trying to kill us!” I yelled, as Alexa planted her bird’s claw on my shoulders, tried to take me out from the B&B. She flew out through the hole on our wall.

How I yearned for my power on time like this. If I could still use it, I could transform myself into iron body, and had no need to feel Alexa’s bird claws pressed against my shoulder’s skin, started to feel painful.

“Go outside the village, Lex!” I yelled once more. “The master is pursuing us. We could jeopardize the safety of the villagers if we stay here!”

Alexa heard me, as she dove down toward the grassland which out-skirting the village. She dropped me once we closed to the ground, and morphed back. We were lying on our backs for a while, tried to catch our breath, especially Alexa. She seemed exhausted. Well, I could not blame her. She just carried me, who was two heads taller and twice of her weight, flying for almost half an hour.

“Are you OK?” I asked, stroking her back in circles.

Alexa was still coughing and panting, but she nodded. “He doesn’t after us?” She whispered.

I cast my vision around, to see nothing out of the element. “So far no. He may lose us for now, but I think he won’t stop just yet. My previous hunch was right; he is a sorcerer with wood element. He is able to manipulate trees to be his weapon. I think we’re safe as long as we are nowhere near any tree. Did you get our connector?”

My partner nodded once more, as she gave me my connector and Pandora band.

“Good girl,” I praised her, and stroke her hair gently.

She pushed my hand hastily, genuinely annoyed by my ministration. I didn’t know why she never liked it when I showered her with affection.

We wore our Pandora band and tried to contact HQ. When we were still waiting for connection, the night sky above us was twinkling for a second. Then, we started to feel another quake.

“Oh no, he found us,” I murmured. “Lex, I need you to take me in the air once more. I will try to search his location from mid-air.”

“Good idea. Once you got him, I’ll go catch that bastard!”

“I? _We_!” I protested. “Do you planned to left me out and go by yourself?”

“This is just 10 PM! You said yourself that you could only use your power once a day, in 15 minutes time window. Why would I let you join me if you’ll be nowhere in being helpful?” My partner cocked her hands on her waist, glared at me.

“There’s no way I would let you go by yourself too, Little Girl!” I said as fierce as she did. “I may not be able to use my power until this day had over, but my vision could help you. Moreover, I have my geomancy gun with me!”

I downloaded my gun and showed it to her. The gun was also compulsory equipment when we were on-duty, as required by Miss B. The gun shaped like traditional, your every day gun, but it was made from titanium, with magazine filled with silver bullets that could explode mid-air, shooting geomancy wave toward the enemy, once it was shot.

Alexa gave a sarcastic look to my gun. As an Esper, there was no EOPID agent who felt any necessity of that mandatory gun. We always considered our power to be our strongest weapon.

“Listen to me, Old Man, just for this one time! You have to stay here, until you regain your power. I could detect that sorcerer location with the department standard goggle!”

Information, the said goggles was another mandatory field equipment. Principally, the goggle made based on my radar vision ability. However, as usual, human creation, as good as it was, would never exceed natural product. The goggle could only detect the location of non-human energy or creature, but could not show their power index.

Alexa, as my partner, was hardly using the goggle. She preferred to count on my vision. This time, she showed her determination by downloading the device, to challenge me back. She even called me ‘Old Man’?!

We glared to each other, with no intention to withdraw. However, we were stopped by another quake, whilst a tree that located around 100 meters from us started to animate. Its root grew longer, ripped the soil beneath it, and stretched out to attack us.

“Run!”

Alexa’s hands started to grow feathers, before they were transformed into a pair of wings. “Listen to me, Abel! Stay away for a while!”

“You listen to me!” I yelled back, but quite helpless, as my body lifted up to escape the tree which trying to catch us.

My partner flew higher, whilst I cast my vision to our surroundings. I did hope that the sorcerer was not a too high-level one, that he would be able to erect a _barrier_ on himself while casting the chant to animate trees. Because, if he was that high-levelled, than it would be hard for me to scan him.

“Turn South, Lex! I haven’t seen anything!”

Alexa abode. This time, even if it was only a glimpse, I was able to detect a spark of golden aura.

“To the castle, the museum! He is in the forest next to the castle!”

I felt the bird Alexa flew closer to the ground, and before I could stop her, she let go her grip on my shoulders when we were only couple of meters high from the ground. My body hit the grass hard, as Alexa flew away.

“Alexa, stop!!” I yelled. “Alexa!!”

I forced my legs to run as fast as they could, gave no shit for the pain caused by wild grasses and sharp pebbles that scratched my bare feet, or when I fell on a rocky slope. I ran like hell toward the castle, and passed by the village where we stayed previously. The quake had stopped there, but many houses destroyed as the aftermath. Some of the women were crying, yelping, or could only stared bewildered with their children on their lap. The children cried, hugged their parents, or screaming in despair looking for their parents. The men clenched their teeth, tried to collect themselves, as they dug into the ruins to find any missing clansmen, or to console their family.

I saw our innkeeper stood in front of their B&B’s ruins. The husband embraced his wife’s shoulder, tried to comfort the woman. They noticed me when I dashed passed them, looked at me dumbfounded, but did not try to stop me. I also did not have time to say hi and chitchat, nor to offer helping hands to help the villagers, even though I felt guilt storming down my heart. They would never face such disaster if it wasn’t because of us. I collected myself, focusing myself on matter at hands, which was to find Alexa, before I eventually joined the villagers here to mourn their beloved ones.

I finally reached the castle’s gates. I narrowed my eyes, strove to see through the veil of the night’s darkness. Half of the castle complex had been shattered from the quake, left ruins everywhere. I pushed my way to the forest, climbed the mounting ruins that blocked the way, whilst casting my radar vision. I tried to scan any trace of human being there, with no avail. However, I was a bit relief because my ‘green world’ did not show any trace of other being either.

“Lex!!” I tried again.

I could still felt a subtle quake beneath my feet. I tried to ignore it, and only focused to find Alexa.

“Alexa!!”

My voice once more bounced by the trees. However, this time I got two kinds of response. The first one, soils beside me opened up, as the tree roots shot out and bashed my ribs mercilessly. I could feel how my body flown in the air before finally landed hard on the ground. Then, the second one was, when I tried to stand up, I saw a body flying toward me. I recognized the petite figure and the red head that lit up under the moonlight, thus hastily got up and prepared to catch Alexa with all power I still had left. I managed to catch my partner, but the repulsion force was too strong for my legs to hold. We fell down, with me sandwiched between Alexa and the ground.

“Lex!!” I tried to suppress and ignored any pain that pierced my body like needles, and checked Alexa’s condition instead. “Lex, are you alright?”

I stroked her head gently, and then move forward to her shoulders. It was when I felt my hand sticky with some reddish and warm liquid. “Alexa!!” I panicked once I realized that those were her bloods.

This time, Alexa moaned. She opened her eyes and frowned in pain.

“Are you alright?” I asked once more.

“My shoulders hurt...,” she whimpered, tried her best to hold back her tears.

I pulled her closer, slightly relieved that her wound did not hit any vital part of her body.

“It’s okay, it’ll heal soon. It won’t hurt anymore after a while,” I whispered, as I rocked her body gently in my arms. “Let’s get out of here first, and wait for back up. Or, we could wait until past midnight. Once I regain my power, I’ll slice that sorcerer to pieces. What about that, hmm? You can wait, right? Hold up the pain, OK?”

Alexa weakly nodded. I ignored my ribs that screamed in protest when I carried Alexa on my back. I swung my legs to run as fast as possible, tried to outrun the roots that tried to knock me down. Then again, the sorcerer did not have any intention to let us go that easily. He apparently chanted the trees in the forest to block our exit, made me frustrated since I could only run in circles.

After some time spent running like a headless chicken, pain and exhaustion finally took their toll. I fell once more, with Alexa’s body sandwiched me down to the ground. I felt her blood dripped on my cheek.

“Abel...,” Alexa whispered half-conscious. “Are we gonna die...?”

I spat on the jinx. “Nonsense! Do you think I will let you go that easily from my initiation period as the partner of the magnificent Abel Lee?”

In the midst of the dark night, I thought I saw Alexa’s thin lips drawn up at one end.

“Right...,” she whispered once more.

I hugged Alexa even tighter. My eyes glanced over my Pandora Box. Actually, I still had one more secret that I had not yet told Alexa. Inside my gadget, I had one instrument that might be able to help me to use my power again, even though the day had not over. Furthermore, with that instrument, I also could use all five elements in 15 minutes timeframe. However, someone told me that the instrument could only be use for five times in my whole life, and after using it, I would have to rest my power for three days. All the restrictions accompanied by one more additional warning: the internal injury if I planned to use my power more than once in a day.

Alexa grimaced in pain once more, whilst the soil in front of us opened up. I drawn my power and collected myself, to carry my partner dodged sideways. _Fuck, it seemed I have to take that last measure_.

“Open box, password...!”

My words were dead in the air, interrupted by a beautiful singing voice. The voice echoed all over the forest as it broke the sorcerer’s chant and stopped the trees.

My partner recognized the voice too. She opened her eyes. This time, her sapphire blue eyes shone bright, full of hope. Her thin lips flashed a relieved smile.

“This voice...”

I nodded and laughed, equally relieved as she was. “The song of siren...”

Strung along with the singing voice, was a melodic guitar sound. The guitar sound followed the singing voice, as it grew louder and sharper. It was also getting more intense, yet maintaining its gentle harmony. The harmony of the singing voice and the guitar sound was so beautiful and mesmerizing, hypnotized each of living beings there. The trees, furthermore, slowly moved their mighty branches and opened the path. Now I could see clearly the museum ruins, and there were two familiar silhouettes walking toward us.

“Shyu... Pats...,” I called meekly, never felt so relieved for their presence.

I watched as the couple approached us. The two were our colleagues, field agents like us, and were partners on and off duty. The lovers both had small and slender figures, made them look cute together. The female name was Patricia Virtanen, Pats for short. She now had stopped singing and was watching us with a wide gentle smile spread across her face. Pats was 19 years old, two years older than Alexa, equally petite, but far more mature than my partner did. She had a fine face, showcased her intelligentsia brilliantly, with a pair of wise light-brown eyes. She always cut her brown hair short, looked boyish as usual, but it also became her signature characteristic. Pats was indeed excelled in boyish sports such as martial arts and shooting. However, her strongest department was singing. It was, in fact, her super power. Her voice could break any spells and moved any living beings from its core. Thus, the nickname “siren” and “song of siren” applied. As in myths, sirens known for their beautiful voice that could hypnotize anyone that was listening.

Her partner-slash-boyfriend, Shyu Ikderi, was an Asian of Manchu descends, with a cute and fresh-face. He was quite short for man, maybe no taller than 170 cm, and had a pair of almond-shape black eyes, the same colour as his nape-long hair. Under his left eye, he had a small mole that made his cute face even prettier. Actually, I was kind of thinking that Shyu and Pats were quite resemblance of each other. Maybe that was what made them looked so good together. Shyu was two years younger than me, 20 years old, and could be considered as one of my best friends in EOPID.

If Patricia’s super power was her singing voice, then Shyu’s was his manipulation for wind energy. He could creates, borrowing, and/or using the power of wind with or without media. However, ever since he got to know Pats, and even more after they were dating, he preferred to channel his power through his guitar, which he named “Little Wind Goddess”. The guitar also served as his weapon. Using it, he could channels his wind power to support Pats’ singing power, or to restore energy, strengthen their offensive power, or to attack the enemy. Me, myself, preferred more Shyu’s style when he was not using his guitar, and casted his “Wind God Fist”. It was more interesting to see, although I admitted his attack with the guitar was no less fierce than his fist. With all modesty, I did admit that the couple were two of the strongest Espers I ever met, and their collaboration would hard to be rivalled by other field agents, or even any Esper, Alexa and I included. Fortunately, the two were very nice kids and very humble, made we get along very well.

“The boss sent you?” I asked.

“Miss B has not yet return,” Pats answered. “Brenna called and asked us to help you. She’s worried since she couldn’t get a hold of you, yet the Law’s satellite shows high-levelled supernatural movement near your last-known GPS position. She has erected the barrier around the museum complex and the forest, so we could fight as hard as we want to. Apparently, the sorcerer is really strong, to be able to make the two of you like this.” 

I cast a faint mocking smile. “He got lucky because I have used my power for today to kick his pet’s ass. It’s a piece of cake for that sorcerer to face Alexa solely.”

“Bullshit...,” Alexa let out a protest with a pinch on my cheek.

“I gave the pain-killer serum for Alexa and stopped the bleeding. Why don’t you two take cover at that castle, while us taking care of the sorcerer.” Shyu helped Alexa to stand and was about to walked her back to the museum ruins, when I blocked his path with my giant body, in comparison with his.

“...and missed the chance for some pay backs? Yeah, right...,” I sneered, and stretched my hand to the Asian man, “Give me one of the pain-killer serums and I’ll go with you to kick that bastard’s ass.”

“Abel...”

“Shyu, I think we indeed will need Abel’s power,” Pats smiled toward her boyfriend. “Just give him the serum. In five minutes time he would be able to use his power, anyway. Right, Abel?”

I winked to Pats. “It’s always lovely to chat with a sensible woman.”

“I wanted to go too.” Alexa pushed Shyu away and tried to stand firmly as proof she was still adequate to fight.

I groaned at the back of my throat. “Lex...”

Noticed that we were likely would wasting time for a pointless argument, Pats immediately intervened. She threw pointed look to us with a big smile.

“Stop arguing no more, or I and Shyu will knock the two of you out ‘till tomorrow evening. Both of you are wounded, and none is actually fit to fight. So, this is what we are going to do: I’ll let you join us, but you have to promise that you will let us make the opening. Not until I gave you signal, that you can join in to blow the final attack to pacify him. Are we clear?”

Alexa and I looked at each other, and realized that Pats was right. We then nodded in agreement, made the boyish girl’s smile grew wider. She started to sing again, when she saw that the trees resumed animating. Shyu also started to strum his guitar. This time, they played more aggressive and intimidating melodies, thus able to open a path. We, then, walked even deeper into the woods.

The sorcerer did not allow himself to be intimidated and tried to fight back. Each times his chant broken by Patricia, he quickly cast new chants. The trees repeatedly opened and blocked our path with their branches and roots. Shyu added his energy, made him beam with bright yellow aura, like a radiant aurora in my radar vision. Receiving the supporting energy from her lover, Pats immediately raised her pitch. This time, they were successful to open even wider path. Based on the plummeted speed that the sorcerer needed to recast his broken chants, we knew that he had been wounded from Pats’ attack at certain degree. This fact made us added our walking speed. We certainly could not let the bastard healed first.

“There he is!” Alexa hissed.

Not far in front of us, stood behind giant trees fort, we finally saw Liam Rourke. His handsome face wore a disgust expression toward us, and his royal blue eyes that fixed on us full of hatred. His plump lips did not cease to read chants which dancing outside his erected barrier, whilst the tattoos of magical patterns on the part of his forearms, which not covered by his shirt, were glowing each time he shot out his magical energy. Sorcerers actually were pretty easy to spot on, since they always tattooed their strongest spells on their body, particularly arms and back. However, sometimes they used veil spell to hide their identity from laymen, but would need to reveal it whenever they were using their power. Pats and Shyu took their melodies to higher level, made Rourke’s handsome face frowned in agony, whilst some of his chants were broken once more. This time, he barely had energy to replace them.

I glanced over the digital time on the connector. Ten more seconds, and it would be the new day. I silently did the countdown. Right when I count zero, the lovers managed to break Rourke’s last strain of chants, and cracked his barrier walls.

“Now Abel, Alexa!” Pats yelled.

Alexa roared, promptly bolted in her panther shape. I also gathered my energy and cast out the metal element. In the five elements theory, metal was the element that could control wood. Thus, by borrowing the power, I hoped I could crush that bastard.

I let the power gathered on my hand, and used it to smash Rourke’s barrier in one blow, gave way for the panther to tear the warlock apart. Of course, Liam Rourke would not only be sitting duck. He animated a tree near him to protect himself from Alexa, but I took precaution one-step ahead by erecting a metal wall around the three of us. The wall managed to prevent Rourke from animating another tree for protection, made the Irish-man growled in frustration. He finally used his last energy to blow waves of energy attacks to Alexa.

I did not want to spoil Alexa’s enjoyment, thus I merely stood at the side, made sure my metal wall stood firmly. My partner roared once more and transformed into a Minotaur, but her body was one of a bear’s with a gator’s tail. Energy bolts flashed in turns with burst of bear’s claws and whipped of gator’s tail.

In many opportunities, presumably due to her rage, Alexa was careless, thus needed me to protect her with my metal body. However, she did not wait until I pacified all the attacks, but kept dashing toward the sorcerer with her might. She managed to plant her claws on Rourke’s body, including on his good-looking face.

Eventually, after resisting with all he got from Alexa’s fierce attacks and drained all of his energy, Liam Rourke ceased his attack and surrendered. His hand fell weakly on the sides of his body, his tattoos stopped glowing, whilst his blue eyes gazed empty to us. My partner, still pumped up with adrenaline, failed to recognize the sorcerer’s submission, and had approach to bite his neck off. Luckily, I and Shyu were fast enough to erect a somewhat combination of metal and wind shield to bounce Alexa back, in the nick of time, made her fell on her ass. Afterward, after transformed back, that petite girl kept ranting out her dissatisfaction on this incident.

“Liam Rourke, we are Extra Ordinary Phenomenon Investigation Department agents. We are arresting you for the abusive use of sorcery and alchemy, which led to death and other significant damages for the civilians. Therefore, we will take you and stripped you off of your power,” said Pats after put on a collar to cancel any supernatural power that one possessed.

I saw Liam Rourke smiled bitterly. He took a glance to each of us, full of anger and hate, until he fixed his gaze on me.

“Were you the one? Did you kill him?”

“What?”

“Nathan.... Were you the one who killed him?”

The royal blue eyes shed anger and pain.

“It was me! I’m the one who killed you pet!” Alexa growled, stared at the Irish-man nonchalantly. “I bit his head off.”

Just when Alexa finished her word, Liam Rourke silenced the girl with a spat. My partner was not yet ready for such ‘attack’, and could only freeze when the man’s saliva stained her special suit. The petite girl immediately burst into a flame.

“You bastard...!!”

Pats and Shyu hastily jumped to catch Alexa and stopped her from morphing to chew the sorcerer alive. All EOPID agents were required to abide to the International Human Rights when we were executing our tasks. One of the interpreted rules was, we should not intimidate or deliberately hurt any surrendered or arrested power user.

Liam Rourke ignored Alexa’s threat and curses. He returned his gaze to me. This time, pain was dominating his eyes.

“You scared him,” he hissed. “Nathan was scared of you...”

For seconds, I was speechless from his words, whilst my memory remembered vividly how the Balin’s blood-red eyes shed fear when it saw my transformation.

“He shouldn’t have killed two people. _You_ were supposed to stop your pet from killing civilians thoughtlessly...,” I finally spoke.

“He was not my pet!!” Liam roared. However, this time, his eyes were not only shed pain, but tears also ran down his cheeks, dampened the scars left by Alexa. “He wasn’t any pet...”

Liam Rourke fell on his knee and kept crying inaudibly, made us could only look at each other dumbfounded. This could be our first time to saw a master cried for his pet Balin. Most of the case, sorcerer created Balin to do their dirty laundry. Therefore, Balin basically was a mere pet, or property, for its master. My partner seemed disgust with the view, hence decided to step away. She stood next to a tree about three meters far from us, and gave us the sight of her back only.

After managed to compose himself, Liam Rourke lifted his head and stared to us. “You were wrong. Those two..., I killed them, not Nathan. Therefore..., you should’ve killed me instead of Nathan!”

The confession stunned us. This could also be our first time to handle such case. Although sorcerers were fond to make experiments using living beings, but mostly they would be very careful not to put their piece of works for public display like the murders at this village. The reason for that, nonetheless, because sorcery community had always been an exclusive and secretive community, hidden far from the hustle and bustle of the civilian world. If there was any thoughtless killings, usually it was the doing of Balins, that less experienced and tend to showed their power off; the power that they were certainly never taste in their ‘life’-time.

“Those two tried to seduce Nathan. They took advantage of Nathan’s innocence and naive nature! They were two pieces-of-shit that deserved such endings!!” Liam Rourke’s voice echoed in the forest, including inside of our head. His eyes filled with anger and jealousy. After a beat, I, Shyu and Pats finally realized the true motive of Liam Rourke’s act.

“You were in love with your Balin!” We choked in our words.

Liam Rourke drew a faint smile, yet asserting all of his feelings. I noticed that one side of Pats thin lips had pulled up awkwardly, whilst Shyu seemed almost throw up out of disgust, and I was inevitably let out a choking sound. This case was really a whole new experience. Hopefully, it would be the first and the last for us. Otherwise, Miss B would have to provide more of the enhancement serum for us.

I heard two ‘ping’s from Alexa’s connector vaguely, before she walked back to us with haste steps.

“What the hell?!” She was screaming hysterically with eyes glued on her connector. I poked her and whispered.

“Shush, don’t be too deranged. Isn’t it quite common nowadays? You know, for same gender to..., you know... It’s just this time they were Balin and its mas...”

I let my words dead in the air, unable to continue with all the nausea I felt, thanks to the elaborated fact of the real nature of Liam Rourke and Jonathan Cowell’s relationship.

“Alive and dead...” Shyu added, as quiet as he could, and ended his words with a fake cough.

Alexa gave us pointed looks, and then inconsiderately pointed Liam Rourke with her index finger. “Dead...and dead!”

My partner narrowed her eyes when she saw that we did not give any reaction and only looked back to her stupefied. She raised her connector right in front of our nose, and told us to read new messages she just received from Brenna.

“What??!!” This time, the three of us screamed in harmony.

“You sure this is not mistaken?” Shyu asked. “Liam Rourke, born May 15th, 1990...”

“Died July 24th, 2012...?”

“Died?”

“A day before our Balin,” my partner finished our sentence with a stern look. “He is also a Balin.”

“That’s impossible!!” I screamed in disbelieved. “He is too strong for a Balin!”

“Read the information once more, Abel! Before he died, he mastered alchemy. He was a sorcerer!”

“Still...!” I stubbornly screamed in despair. I could feel on this very moment how my pride disintegrated and shattered into small pieces.

“That’s right,” Liam Rourke hissed. “Since I was little, I learned so many crafts and alchemy. However, no matter how much I mastered and studied them, none of them could help me to cure my illness. I finally was resigning myself to fate, was ready to embrace my condition. However, it changed after I met Nathan. He was so full of spirit and vibrant with life, so young and naive. He was so innocence that I couldn’t restrain myself. I was fallen in love with him. For the first time in my life, I was obsessed to try to live on as long as Nathan lived in this world. I just wanted to live with him, grow old with him, yet it was too much of a dream. My body betrayed my wish. My lifetime study disappointed me. I was destined to leave this world hastily, leaving my beloved one, my true love behind. However, fate seemed took pity on me. She didn’t let me left this world alone. She, too, took Nathan to accompany me. We, then, started new. We went to a new place, built our new life... We were never been happier...”

Yet we came and put that happiness to the end. I swallowed hard, not able to face the weeping face of a Balin in front of me. I, Abel Lee, was an EOPID agent for four bloody years, killed numerous Balins, yet, at that moment, I was unable to even stare to this Balin.

Liam Rourke shut his mouth, but remained stared at us, and still crying. For some minutes, we all were silent.

“Something’s wrong!” Shyu suddenly hissed. He hastily approached Liam.

“Wh...What is it?”

Shyu waved his hand in front of Rourke’s eyes, and then shook his shoulders. The Balin did not give any reaction.

“Shyu, watch out!” Patricia yelled and pulled his lover away from the sorcerer.

Said sorcerer’s body was now sizzling and smoke came out from it. His handsome face had now lost its shred of humanity. His body blackened, whilst the royal blue eyes were losing its colour.

“He’s dead,” Pats whispered. “His master turned him off...”

Alexa casted her eyes to our surroundings, as if she was trying to took a glimpse of any responsible culprit that lurked in the dark of the night. “Coward!! Show me your face if you dare!!”

I walked approaching what was left from a Liam Rourke. I stared to his now blank eyes, similar with Jonathan Cowell’s last gaze.

“Open box, password 5531, user Lee, Abel...”

The once was a sorcerer transformed into digital mosaic, then sucked into the Pandora Box.

“Let’s go home,” I whispered to my colleagues, and pulled Alexa by her shoulders. “It’s more than enough for a day job...”

**


	3. Danzel Lee

“I need to go to my cousin’s house. That’s why today I can’t go home together with you...”

I felt the piercing again, as if it wanted to shatter my brain into pulp. I always got that kind of feeling and pain inside my head, whenever someone lied to me. The girl in front of me was one of that some ones. She even had done it quite often. I stared at her fully make-up round face, a winning proof of how great the mixture between Caucasian race with Asian, which I used to consider cute. My eyes lingered for a while at her plump lips which now drawn to make a fake smile, which I used to consider sweet and at her big coffee-brown eyes, which I used to relate with sincerity and innocence. This face in front of me used to make me fell head over heels, but now I could only feel disgust. 

“You’re not angry right, Danzel?” She asked with a fake sweet voice and put on her puppy eyes.

 _How could I get angry to something and someone that I don’t give any shit to?_ I said to myself, whilst pulled the sweetest smile I could plaster on my face.

“Then, I’ll go ahead,” I said hastily, couldn’t wait to flee from the place, before she tortured me furthermore with another lie. She waved to me, which I replied with another sweet-fake smile. If I had to face such a pathological liar every day, sooner than later I would become one of her kinds too. _Such an irony_...

I walked eagerly to the parking lot, to get my motorcycle, and to go home ASAP. I did not want to spend another minute in this fucking-dreaded private international school, which packed with such fake rich-kids. If it wasn’t because of my eager older brother that wanted to make sure I could receive the best of education that he could afford and solely motivated by the fact that my one and only best friend was going to this school too, I’d rather go to a less-fancy, but filled with more descent, real and humble students, school. My steps stopped when I saw the said best friend was sitting on his CBR motorcycle that parked next to mine. Clearly, he was waiting for me.

“Irene doesn’t tag along?” He asked as he was tossing his helmet between his hands.

I smiled to Han Yoo, my one and only best friend, and resumed my steps. Yoo was a Korean descends, with an oval face, high cheekbones, long nose, and thick lips. He was very tall, around 180, three centimetres shorter than my brother, and his eyes were slanting under a pair of heavy brows. We first met when he and his schoolmates were visiting our orphanage as part of their school project. That time, he and I were both just started the seventh grade, and had been best friends ever since, until now, when we were on grade eleven.

“Cousin’s house,” I answered, as I crossed my fingers.

Yoo nodded, understood. “Another new excuse, it seems. I never peg her for a creative...”

“You can ask her if you need any excuse to skip class.”

My best friend broke in laughter. He reached my shoulder and squeezed it gently. “Chin up, man. You could always break things up with her and find your happiness elsewhere. You don’t like her anymore, anyway...”

I rolled my eyes. It was not that the idea to break up with that girl never crossed my mind, as Yoo advised, but I was kind of lazy to do that.

“You do know that she is a hard-core drama queen, and I hate to be involved in any drama. If I break up with her, she undoubtedly will take the role of a victim. I also hate to be centre of her cronies’ attention, not to mention all the gossips that I’ll be hearing. Can you imagine all the hassle? Maybe later, if my patience has reached its lowest level, I may do so. Moreover, I got the proof of her cheating on me straight from her head. How I could explain that?”

“Yeah, that girl is careful enough to hide her ‘infidelity’ with that neighbouring high school’s basketball captain. But if you want me to, I could help you to gather the evidence you need.”

I waved the offer, asking Yoo to dismiss the idea. “No need to bother you. If I wanted to, I could make her spill out all of it in front the whole school, anytime, without her even realizing it.”

Yoo smiled so wide, flashing lines of white teeth. “I forgot. You have that ability...”

I laughed along with him. Yes, I did have ‘ability’ that I was quite sure not everyone has. At first, I noticed that I could tell if someone was lying to my face. Since I was little, as an orphan, I was raise in the orphanage. I had seen a lot of hypocrisies and lies in my whole life. There were only few people that I know, who never lie to me, or betrayed my trust. Yoo was one of them, therefore I trusted him so much. When I entered high school, I realized that my power started to evolve. If I add more energy, I could retrieve any fact or truth I needed from anyone who had became target of my power. Exactly with this ability did I drawn out truth about how my girlfriend had two-timing me with other boy, without having her realized it. My target would never have any memory about me turned their head upside down to find any information I need.

“What about you? How’s training?” I asked Yoo in turn.

My best friend also had ‘special ability’, which became another reason why we could be so bound together and could support and trust each other so much. Yoo was born in a Shaman family. Shamans were people that had talent to access the spirit world, talked to the spirit, and in the highest level, they could ask one of their sanctified ancestor spirits or deities to become their guardian spirit. They could also borrow their guardian spirit’s power to attack their enemies.

If the shaman family had ancestor that possessed strong power and skill during their lifetime, than the family would became stronger. For example, like Yoo’s family. He told me that the Han family, which came from the same ancestor as the Han in China, had three ancestors that possessed great power. Yoo’s father and older brother were successfully summoned their powerful army general ancestors as their guardian spirit, whilst Yoo was still struggling to summon his family’s deity ancestor called Han Xiangzi. After googled it, I noticed that Han Xiangzi was the name of one of the Chinese Taoist deities.

I patted my best friend’s back, as he sighed heavily, tried to give encouragement. We always spoke about our ability in secret, and hid it from our other friends. Actually, I did not comprehend well how Yoo’s ability works, nor had any understanding about a Taoist god, Han Xiangzi, who was often portrayed playing flute, surrounded by white cranes. However, I promised myself that I would always supporting him and be there for him.

“Change topic, please. I don’t wanna talk about that piper...”

“ _Your_ ancestor,” I reminded him and laughed.

Yoo rolled his eyes. “Whatever. By the way, do you ever notice that you’ve changed a bit?”

“Oh great, you don’t wanna talk about your ancestor, and decided to talk about me instead?” I mockingly punched him on his upper arm. “I changed how?” 

“I don’t know...more easy-going, I guess. If it was the old you, I’m pretty sure you’ve made sure Irene got what she deserved.”

“Do you mean I was crueller before?” I jeered, which replied by Yoo with a grin.

I pondered. I guessed he was right. I did become more easy-going and _patient_ than before.

“It seems your brother’s influence quite significant, since you’re only been living together for a year and half.”

I pondered even deeper. When I was on grade 9, just shortly before the national exam, the head of the orphanage introduced me to a guy. They told me that that guy was my long-separated older brother. My brother told me that we separated when I was still a baby. According to the woman who raised him, a relative of our mother, my brother said, our mother had died from illness, whilst our father’s whereabouts was unknown. Well, for me, unknown was equal with no longer around.  After the death of our mother, the woman took the role of guardian for my brother and me. However, she had her ugly past that forced her to constantly in run. Since I was still a baby and feared for my safety, the woman put me at the orphanage, and took my brother Abel with her. They were together and always in move until my brother was old enough to live on his own. Before they separated, the woman reminded my brother to find me back. He tried to located me for some years, and eventually found me on that said week.

Initially, I was sceptically listening to his story, but since my ‘lie detector’ did not give me any sign that he was lying, I decided to trust him and accepted the offer to live with him. Moreover, I hated that orphanage, so I would accept any getaway offer on the table. Since then, I had been living together with my older by five years brother. Then, as Yoo had said, my older brother’s strongest trait was his easy-going character. He always lived his life in positive thinking and attitude. He always had strong empathy and always had faith toward others. I, in the contrary, had been exposed to other’s maliciousness and hypocrisy for so many years. Therefore, I was never able to have such empathy. From my experience, empathy would only lead to self-destruction. I could only rub on his easy-goingness, which eventually made me ignore and tune out those who had hurt and betrayed me.

“I’m wondering, does your brother have ‘ability’ too?”

I shrugged my shoulders. I did think of that for several times. However, my brother never mentioned nor told me about some sort of special ability or super power, so I deduced that he might not be having it. It came across my mind too to ask him about it straight out, but I was afraid if he did not have any ability and after hearing my question about ability, he would think that I was crazy and ‘need help’. I loved my life now, and to be honest, I was afraid if I would’ve lost it by doing so. Therefore, I kept silent about my power to him.

“Oh no... They are at it again...”

I snapped back from my train of thoughts and followed Yoo’s line of sight. Not too far from us, on a slightly remote area of the school, near the dumpster, we saw some girls were surrounding another petite girl with long raven hair. I narrowed my eyes to see the surrounded girl a better look and tried to pull any information from my head, with no avail.

“Who’s that?”

“Right, popular kid like you might not know her. Her name is Megan Lukas, our junior by a year, and just transferred here around three weeks ago.”

I frowned to the word ‘popular’ that Yoo used for me. I really had no idea why I could be grouped in that category. Well, one reason did occur on my mind. I tried not to attract any unnecessary attention as best as I could for my whole life, but since I entered this school, I received Irene’s attention more than necessary. And, since she was the ‘queen’ of this school, as her boyfriend, my social status had moved up to the peak of the food chain. Plus, I befriended with Yoo, one of this school’s jock. Hence, popular also applied for him. It was not like we needed it though.

“And how come a _popular_ kid like you knew her?” I retorted cynically.

Yoo grinned. “Because I am less popular than you are, Irene’s boyfriend, one of the top three students and the captain of soccer team... In your comparison, I’m still down to earth and low profile. Plus, my long-lost childhood friend, Kencana Nimms, is her classmate and get along well with her. According to Ken, Megan is OK. It’s just that she is quite shy and reserved, so most of her classmates see her as a nerd. But, she is really cute, don’t you think? The boys often talking about her at the locker room, so in matter of days she has been targeted by the popular girls.”

“That group are the ten graders?”

“You really are very ignorant with Irene’s community, aren’t you? Two of them are her BFFs, popular girls from basketball club and cheers.”

My brows shot up, as they were usually, whenever I found something interesting. “Is that so?”

“D’, what are you doing?” Yoo was looking at me bewildered when I walked approaching the girls. “D’, are you serious?”

I ignored my best friend, and kept walking forward. Some of the juniors saw me walking by, and poked their friends, who poked their other friends, until that group cleared a path to the cornered little Megan. They glanced to Yoo and I with combination of adoration and embarrassment of being caught doing something that certainly was neither elegant nor proper.

“Senior...”

“Danzel, Yoo...”

I ignored them and looked straight to Megan. Well, Yoo was certainly not kidding. She _was_ cute, pretty even. It was not the kind of artificial beauty like Irene, but a more natural beauty. She had a waist long raven hair, styled in two ponytails, each on her side of her head, screaming all cuteness in the world. I think she wasn’t mixed blood like Irene and me, despite the colour of his hair. She had heart-shaped face with a small turned-up nose that sculpted so perfectly above her natural red lips. Her cheeks were a bit chubby, but two dimples that adorned them made her looks even prettier. She did not look at me, as if did not realized our coming. Her cognac eyes seemed more interesting to observe her black flat shoes, whilst her body was leaning backward leisurely to the wall. She did not seem care about the threat from the bullies, nor needed anyone’s help to escape from them. A glimpse of regret flicked in my heart. Why should I sticking my nose like this? I suddenly felt stupid, but there was no way for me to back off. I reached to the petite girl’s hand and dragged her away. She still showed no expression and found something interesting to see on the ground instead, but she followed me and did not deny my hand.

“Danzel, what are you doing? Do you know her?” One of Irene’s BFFs asked.

“Danz, Irene would be upset if she knew about this...,” the other one carried on.

I turned my head and glared. From my peripheral vision, I saw Yoo had face-palmed himself. Oh yeah, my best friend _knew_ what kind of stunt I would make to slap those girls with my sarcastic pointed comments. Especially, previous incident with Irene gave me this _strong_ urge to lash out to her friends.

“I’m sorry, but do I know you?” I asked coldly to the girls. “Why would you meddle on my business? As for Irene, you have no need to worry. Irene won’t be upset since as we speak, she is having a great jolly sweet time with...Err, what was his name again, Yoo?”

My best friend sighed helplessly, and replied. “Zack...”

I noticed that the neighbouring high school basketball captain’s name managed to make Irene’s bitches face turned as white as the walls next to them. Seeing their reaction, I flashed a satisfied smile and enjoyed the sensation of winning.

“Ah right, him...,” I nodded to the name and with a warm hand of Megan still clung in my own, I dragged her walked away from that place.

**

“A simple thanks would be enough,” I sneered when Megan was leaving us with her head still hanged low. There was not even once that ungrateful girl looked up to see me properly.

The girl stopped. Her head nodded so swiftly, while her lips moved as if she was mumbling something. I guessed she was mumbling the ‘thank you’ that I asked from her. After done that gesture, she resumed her steps and not turning back anymore.

“She is so not cute,” I commented.

“You can’t blame her, she never asked your help,” Yoo patted my shoulder. “Besides, you were helping her not because you care for her.”

I smirked and did not deny the sarcasm.

“Okay, I need to go home now. Abel had work and did not come home yesterday, but he just texted, said that he will be home in the evening. I wanted to be at home before he does, to prepare dinner and do chores.”

Yoo smirked back to me and mouthing “ _Such a good baby brother_...” I stuck out my tongue to the sneer and waved to him. Next seconds, I had saddle my ass on my white CBR and drove it home in bullet speed.

**

As I wanted, I arrived at home before Abel did. Our home was a forty-five square meters wide apartment with two bedrooms, just at the outskirt of Jakarta. The apartment complex had five towers, all painted in soothing brown colour and surrounded by clusters of housing. The complex was far from the city-centre, but that would mean less traffic, the way I liked it. Abel had bought this place long before he found me. After he took me in, he once asked if I preferred to live in a house instead of an apartment. He said he could make arrangement and put the apartment on lease to buy a house for us, but I said no. I liked the place, since it was not too big, yet had enough room for the two of us. At the very least, I had my own room for privacy. Abel did not have too many furniture too, only a long dark grey couch with a coffee table, a TV stand where the stereo was and the wide LED TV bracketed to the wall on top of it. Next to the living room was the kitchen with several built-on cupboards and drawers, along with the sink, cooking utilities and stoves. Abel did not have dining table, only a bar that also functioned as the prepping table. I could see that Abel traits of easy-goingness also applied on his choice of minimalist style for his interior. I felt grateful for that, since less furniture meant less time to do cleaning.

I took time to take a shower, and then done some chores. After done cleaning, I started to browse the fast-food pamphlets to call take-away for dinner. Abel could cook very well, but I had no skill on that department, and preferred to entrust my nutrition to the Chinese or Japanese takeaway. I finally decided to call Chinese takeaway as our dinner for today. After my ordered fried noodles, rice and _kungpao_ chicken arrived, I spent time to watch TV. My mind flashed back to the girl whom I ‘rescued’ this afternoon. Yoo was truly not mistaken. That girl was really beautiful and cute, but her attitude was plain rude. However, my last life-lesson also taught me that pretty girls were often cannot be trusted. Girls like Megan might be better. She seemed genuine, not fake.

I could not hold a smile when I relived the feelings of softness and warmth from the delicate hand that I held firmly just then. She smelled like fresh-cut flowers, fresh and sweet, urged you to stop over and take a deep intake of breath, savouring her fragrance to the fullest. Truth to be told, the girl seemed mysterious, and she had arouse my interest. She could be a good distraction, since I did not want to be occupied nor overwhelmed with my problem with Irene. Not to mention, if I was about to make a move to Megan, it certainly would shattered Irene’s pride and choked her with her own ego.

“I think that would be nothing in comparison with my patience for her these past months,” I assured myself to the plan and grinned from imagining Irene’s expression.

I snapped back to reality when I heard the sound of keys used and the front door next to me was opening. I looked up and saw my brother came home with his friend. His well-built tall body was leaned on his smaller-frame friend’s body.

“D’? You came home already?” My brother glanced at me stupefy.

“You said yourself that you will be home in the evening. That’s why, I went home before you did,” I gave him a stern look, and observing him.

The first thing I noticed was his outfit. It was different with what he was wearing when he left for work yesterday, and definitely was out of his element. Abel loved hip-hop style and always dressed himself with loose T-shirts or hoodies and equally loose board shorts or sweatpants. However, today he was wearing a number too small punk rock T-shirt. If I was to guessed, the T-shirt must be belonged to Shyu, the smaller guy whom he was leaning on, my brother’s best friend. Shyu caught my gaze and smiled at me awkwardly, which I replied with a smile too. The shorter guy helped to seated Abel on a couch, whilst my brother frowned and clutching his ribs. Abel seemed had a hard time to suppress his pain and tried to gave me no hint of it, but it was obvious that he was badly injured. I could notice faint scratches and bruises on his oval face, be it on his define chin or on his sturdy jaw line, although slightly screened by his orange hair. Some of the scratches also stretched under his trim eyebrows, just inch next to his deep black eyes. Abel’s thin lips also formed a strict line whenever he tried to hold a painful moan from the changes he made on his seating position.

“What happened?”

Shyu looked befuddled and dead of words on how to answer my inquiry. Abel finally opened his mouth. “I’ll tell you later,” he promised, then looked back to Shyu. “Thanks, man. Say thanks to Pats too, especially because she’s willing to face Miss B and save me from her majesty’s wrath.”

Shyu laughed. “Don’t worry about it, it was nothing. Moreover, Miss B only loved to grind our masculine pride. She would do no harm to the female agents. I’ll take my leave then, since Pats is waiting for me at home. Bye, Danzel...”

I escorted the smaller guy to the door, and shut it once he walked away. I turned my head and gave a pointed look toward my brother, demanding the explanation he promised.

“Work hazard,” he explained. “We got a rough job, and got injured in the process. For the details, I’m sorry, but I can’t share it with you.”

This was one of my brother’s characters, which I liked, but of which irritated me a lot. Abel never lied, but he was very discreet about his job. He only told me that he worked for Law Inc., world’s number one conglomerate, Alpha Law’s company. He said he was a field worker for Brilliant Law, Alpha Law’s only daughter, and his main job desk was to include dangerous tasks to assure civilian’s peace and safety. Hence, he advised me to simply write ‘field worker’ or ‘security worker’ to fill any form that required me to write down my guardian’s line of work. More than that, he would never breathe out any detail about his job. True, he did not lie, but that did not mean I would not be tortured with uneasiness whenever he went to work. Who could guarantee that he would always came home in one piece, safe and sound?

“Was it a success?” I asked bitterly, almost chocked on my own words. I caught a glimpse of a thick bandage that was wrapped around Abel’s ribs, and frowned.

My brother flashed a weak smile, which made me stunted because I could see trace of guilt and sorrow in his eyes. It was something that he never brought back home before.

“You could say so. I’m so damn hungry, D’. What did you buy for dinner?”

That was the hint for me to stop asking, because my brother did not wanted to tell me more than what he had share, but he also did not want to lie to me.

“Chinese food....”

I went to the kitchen bar where the takeaway boxes were and grabbed his, along with the chopsticks. I gave the boxes to Abel, who ravished the food in instant. I seated myself next to him, still observing him. My brother seemed genuinely hungry, and he tried to act as normal as he could. However, that trace of guilt still lingered in his eyes. I sat quietly, yet deep down I was in battle with myself.

**

“ _No way D’, you can’t do that._ ”

I sighed when I heard Yoo’s expected reply. When Abel went to take a shower, I snuck out to call Yoo for his opinion regarding my brother’s problem. Now I sat on one of the emergency stairs, at the end of our hallway.

“ _You promised it yourself, D’, that you would respect those who never lied to you and would never mess up with their head to get any information you need.”_

“Damn it Yoo, I know that...”

” _Abel never lies to you, right?_ ”

“No...”

“ _He only doesn’t want to tell you, right_?”

“Yeah...”

“ _Then it’s the end of conversation. Do not break your own promise! Not to mention, what’d happen if your brother actually have special ability too? There is no certainty that it would have same effect when you use your power to ‘normal people’. What if you hurt your brother with your power, instead? Have you ever thought about that?_ ”

Yoo’s last argument struck me. That was right, so far I never applied my power to people with ability. For those who had no ability, my power had no after effect, but as Yoo said, the case might be different with those who had ability. My power could be useless to applied to them, or, the worst scenario, created a damaging effect.

“But he is my big brother Yoo. He suddenly came home broken, how’d you expect me to just sit still? More or less I do have right to find out, right? Plus, he may not have any ability,” I tried my best to reason.

“ _That’s not an excuse, D’. If Abel refused to tell you, then you should just drop it. He must’ve had strong reason for that. I say, it will be best for you to support him and just focus on ease his burden at work with your role as his little brother, instead of obsessed yourself to find out the story he clearly does not want to share with you.”_

Yoo was right. I knew it. It’s just..., I couldn’t let go

“ _D’, I shall remind you of my grandfather’s words. Nothing happened as a mere coincidence. Everything has its own purpose. Similar with that logic, there is no evil power, bad ability. Our power and ability are part of something big, to give meaning to something good. If there was power used for evil, it wasn’t that power which evil. It was the user, who chose to use his power to hurt others..._ ”

“For those who are understand, the fine line between good and evil is thin, since the two are depending on man’s subjective point of view, and the two are resonance with each other. However, true goodness will never display evil, and true goodness will make many people happy,” I recited the words that were taught by Yoo’s grandfather to us when we were still in middle school.

 “ _You do remember,”_ Yoo sighed. “ _Please don’t forget those words D’. I’ll tell you this. To be honest, I will extremely upset if you ever use your power to get any secret or story that I don’t want to share with you, just because you’re curious. If I’ve decided to hold something from you, that does not mean I don’t trust you. It means I could bear and solve it myself. If at the end, I do need your help or have solved the problem, I definitely will tell you. Have faith on your brother, and have faith on yourself! It’s enough for him to know that you’re there for him. There’s no need for you to be bothered with his work problem. In an extent, he is protecting and cherishing you, D’.”_

“Do you think so?”

“ _I know so. Have faith on someone who have enjoyed a healthy family life for 17 years with a father and an older brother who are always said that and done that._ ”

I laughed and felt relieved. I decided to take his advice.

**

I didn’t need a second look to recognize Irene’s back. My steps stopped when I saw that familiar silhouette was standing hesitantly in front of our door. She seemed mustering her courage to press the doorbell, but I stopped her before she done so. _How the hell was she able to get up and found our apartment?_ I had only told her where I live, but never gave her our room number. Luckily, I was back just in time. I reminded myself to scold the doorman once I saw his smug face.

“Why are you here?”

Irene was surprised. She turned her head, and the adorned with fake eyelashes and mascara pair of eyes of hers bugged out.

“Danzel, you surprised me. I thought you’re inside...”

“Do I need to report my whereabouts, even in my own apartment? What do you want?”

I guess I had used my rudest voice and sharpest tone to her, because she looked petrified. I knew that in my schoolmates’ eyes, if I were a female, they would surely give me the ‘ice-queen’ nickname. I was well-known for my ice-cold and expressionless face, two things that I suspected caught Irene’s and most of my fan girls’ interest in the first place. When Irene eventually managed to have me as her boyfriend, she had added her popularity one more level. I was still that cold personality, even though I had joined the popular kids’ community. However, to spare myself from any drama and hassle, I hardly spoke in rude manner. I tried to be as charming as I could with my verbal expression, without elaborated it too much.

Irene tried to compose herself and had now played a strand of her dyed light-brown hair. She gazed me under her eyelashes, fluttered it several times, and tried to charm me with her ‘cute expression’. If I was the five months ago version of me, I certainly had succumb to her charm and took her in my arms. However, I fed up with her, hence only disgust I could feel now.

“I missed you,” she whispered.

I winced when the piercing pain struck my brain and eardrums. She even still able to flushed in spite of her lie. How on earth she managed to do that? Now I was sure that this girl was created to make me suffer.

“I wanted to see you,” she added. She was honest this time. “Could I come in and see your place?”

We had been together for quite some time, but I never invited Irene to my apartment, or moved on beyond kissing and touching each other necessarily, especially after I knew she often lied through her teeth to me. I did not want to let her filth presence pollute the nice atmosphere and a sincere relationship I shared with Abel.

“My brother is sick, let’s just talk here. I ask you one more time, what do you want?”

Her plump and covered with pink lipstick lips flashed a seducing smile, whilst her manicured fingers tried to reach my arms, and her body had lean forward to me. I pulled myself back, diverted her ‘attack’. She looked surprise with my withdrawal, obviously did not see that coming. Her flirting smile changed to an awkward one.

“I...heard from Giselle, that you somehow have been listening to hearsay of me cheating on you...”

“Yep. Except, it was neither hearsay or rumour, right? That was the truth.”

I shunned once more, when I saw she tried to reach my arms again.

“You’re wrong, Danzel!!” Her voice was hoarse, as if she wanted to cry. _What a drama queen._ “I admit that I got close with Zack, and I did know he fancy me, but I don’t like him. He keeps make a move on me, no matter how many times I’ve told him that we are together and I love you. I admit too, I went out with him several time, including this afternoon, but I did that to explain to him how serious our relationship is. I didn’t tell you all of these because I didn’t want to make you jealous. I initially planned to tell you once I convinced him to stop make a move on me.”

I frowned in pain and clasped my ears that currently stabbed with piercing pains.

 “Danzel...?”

“Don’t touch me!!” I groaned and panted, felt that sweats had damped my forehead. I threw her a stern look. _Bitch_! “Could you...please..., at least once... stop lying?! I knew about the real nature of your relationship with _that_ Zack, so there’s no need for you to fabricate such excuse no more! How about this...”

I paused to take a long-breath and shook my head to fully dismissed the pain that still lingered. I clenched my teeth and resumed my words with firmness.

“Irene..., I’ve stopped liking you, stopped care for you for a while now. Therefore, let’s just end this useless relationship.”

Irene’s lips were shaking. Her eyes stared at me, genuinely looked shock. “You... dumped me?!”

“That’s right!”

“Because of that bitch?”

I frowned. Why oh why did this woman never done self-reflection, and always found a scapegoat to be blame?

“What girl? I don’t know what you mean...”

“That... Megan...Margo or whatever her name was! That disgusting girl who thinks that she’s so pretty and centre of attention...”

“Are you talking about yourself?”

“DANZEL!!”

“Sorry, slip of tongue,” I mumbled, with no regret at all. I waved my hand. “Were you talking about Megan who was bullied by your gang today afternoon? That Megan? She has nothing to do with this. If you need to blame someone, just blame yourself.”

The manicured fingers swung once more to slap (or scratch) my cheek. Fortunately, I had good reflex. I caught her hand and pushed her away from any part of my body.

“I’ve dumped you, so you are no longer my girlfriend. Now, you’re just a random schoolmate for me. And, I hate it if my schoolmate had her tantrum at my place, so please leave. Or, you prefer I call security to escort you out?”

Irene yanked her hand from my grip, and stared fiercely. She, then, turned away and ran. Well, I believed that was her wisest decision to make tonight.

**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like it, please give me kudos and feed back. Thank you for reading ^^

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading ^^


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